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The long awaited first Expansion Pack for The Sims 4 means another visit to EA Games to get hands on with "Get To Work". But I'm thinking to myself, with so much detailed information already released about the new Active Careers on the recently released videos, what more can there be for us to report back to our communities that isn't already public? Well, not much really, as far the headline features go. There was also the niggling issue that the embargo for content gleamed from these fan events that have been happening around the globe the past week happened to be during our time at EA, so we were behind all the other sites that have already posted their reports, but hey ho.

I'm going to break from tradition (which is actually traditional for me), and not even try and cover this whole pack with the limited time of around 3 hours that we had. Instead I'm going to focus in great detail, on two of the aspects of this pack that I'm really drawn to. But first, my overall opinion of 'Get To Work'.

I'm not being all 'fanboy' here and just 'bigging up' another EA product because they invited me along. I am genuinely excited that in effect, one of my favourite EP's of all time, 'Open For Business' from Sims 2 is back with an awesome update! But at the same time they have also bought something completely new to the game which also solved one of the problems that OFB solved. That is of course, the very much requested ability to not only follow your Sims to work but to influence their careers too. So this pack for me really does offer value for money, with something old that we loved being bought back bigger and better than before, and something completely new. I expressed to SimGuruAzure that I hoped all Sims 4 EP's would follow the same trend of old and new, but as she didn't take bribes we'll just have to wait and see on that!

More of the old making a comeback with bells on are Aliens. Abductions and alien pregnancies are a given but there are many new elements not seen before too. Basements also make their return to the game but will actually be included in a free update to coincide with the EP release, so you get 2 floors of basements as well as an additional above ground floor, making 6 storied buildings possible.

There are other great preview articles around the community that have focussed on the new Active Careers so from here on in I'll be concentrating on two things that will have a major influence on the way I play my game, and they are the new Retail System, and the Baking Skill.

In Sims 2 I combined the best bits of Open For Business and Seasons to create a Farmers Market complete with huge greenhouses so that my stay-at-home Sims could harvest tons of fresh goods to sell in their shop. With Get To Work's addition of the Baking Skill and the already excellent food system of base game, I'm a man on a mission to recreate this in Sims 4!

The Baking Skill

Azure explained to me that the introduction of the Baking Skill was to allow players to make better use of the fresh produce available to them in the base game. And if you are thinking "why baking when we have cooking" then let me quote the tooltip for the Baking Skill: "Baking is science in action. You can't just throw random ingredients into a bowl like some chef. You have to have a plan!" Fortunately, that plan involves a large helping of sugar!
Some essential objects will help with baking in the Retail System like the Cupcake Factory and the Warming Rack, which are used to store baked food items. As Sims progress in the Baking Skill they can add toppings, frostings or piping (at a small extra cost), to add quality and value.

I was able to find 36 new baked goods, many of which need fresh ingredients. Here is a list, along with some images of my first Store and Baking Skilled Sim preparing some dishes:

The Retail System

Sims can own more than one Store. You can use the phone to start the process of buying a Retail Lot of which the game ships with 3 premade stores and one empty Lot in an area called Magnolia Promenade (photo below), a pretty waterfront area complete with scenic paddle steamer. Here are the details, and there are pictures of each at the bottom of the article:

The Retail System is more advanced than the old OFB model. Sims won't just rock up and buy stuff, they need to be 'sold' by yourself or your staff. The number of customers visiting your store will depend on the store's kerb appeal. You can purchase advertising to temporarily increase kerb appeal, or place retail and neon signs for a more lasting impact (you can view your kerb appeal from the 'financial report' on the cash register).

When you set up a new business you will need to add some funds to it from your family funds balance. Each store you own has its funds managed separately to cover its expenses and actions, such as building, placing items, restocking, paying staff and advertising. Stores can also go into debt where they can then not reopen until you transfer in more cash from your household funds. Likewise, profits from a business can be transferred out to household funds at any time.

Display units can be placed in a store (including freezers for perishable goods) where items placed on them will automatically be set for sale, unless you specify otherwise. Craftable items can be copied but will sell at a lower value. Copies of copies will sell at an even lower value still, but can help maintain a supply of goods.

Employees have 3 different skills that determine how well they will work: Sales, Maintenance and Work Ethic. Sales will influence how they interact with customers and how quickly they can ring up sales. Maintenance is about how quickly they will restock items and clean, while a high Work Ethic means a Sim is less likely to slack off during their shift. If you do see staff playing with their phone, socializing with each other or goofing around having fun you should use the 'berate for slacking' interaction on them. You could also fire them. You can have a maximum of 3 staff per store, unlocked gradually as you acquire Perk Points from sales.

To summarise then....

I wish I had more time to delve into creating and running a business at the event but then again, it's given me something to look forward to when I get my hands on the game on April 2nd (U.S.A. are lucky enough to get it March 31st). I have a sneaking suspicion that many of you will be looking forward to the same additions to your game too. You can of course create a Photography Store using the new Photography Skill, an Art Gallery, Clothing Outlet, Furniture Store or almost anything else.

Feel free to share your thoughts on Facebook, I'd really like to hear what you will be doing with your Get To Work's stores! And I already have a list of needs for our awesome Featured Artists to create for me to build my retail empire, so check back here to get your mitts on some essential retail CC soon!

I make no excuses for missing out loads of the new stuff this EP brings in the time I had. There are plenty of other reports around the community, some specializing in other areas. I urge you to go visit them if you need any more convincing on this product!

Here's to the first Sims 4 EP!

Right. FA's... Gardening and Store stuff please!!!

/Steve

JF&S Clothiers

The Roadstead

Preeminent Domain

The Sims Resource are proud to announce that we are Alpha testing new objects for The Sims 4 using our developing tool, Workshop. As we invite our audience to start downloading this content we would like to remind everyone that objects are in their Alpha stage which means they may not always work as intended with certain new aspects of the game like manipulating rooms. We welcome any feedback that can be useful in getting these objects to the Beta stage which means telling us about any bugs or problems you may experience with any of this early content (please use support or forums). All objects are being reviewed by testers before they are published, but we cannot be held responsible for negative effects on your game. Remember that none of these items contain game changing code like hacks or scripts and can simply be removed by deleting the .package file from your Mods folder.Enjoy the new content!

At TSR we pride ourselves for being a friendly place where anyone interested in creating Custom Content (CC) for The Sims can upload their creations and also get better at creating through tutorials and help from within our friendly Artist Community. We have a Wiki, creative Forums and a popular Chatroom on Skype where many of our most popular Artists hang out daily to solve problems or share experiences and knowledge. To join our Skype chats, see this thread: http://forums.thesimsresource.com/index.php?/topic/275572-tsr-skype-chats/

A nurturing ground for Artists

TSR has always been a nurturing ground for some of the best Artists this community has ever seen, where many have started out as beginners and over time honed their skills and gathered thousands of fans and millions of downloads. The very best are recognized as Featured Artists (FA) and Select Artists (SA) here on TSR.

Time to invite new Artists!

The Sims 4 has just been released and as with any new game release there are no Artists already invited to our FA and SA teams for the new game, giving everyone a fair chance to receive the recognition and perks that comes with it.

A quick overview of the FA/SA perks:

You get a free VIP membership.

You get a unique FA or SA Badge on your Minisite indicating your status on the site.

You will be listed on the Featured/Select Artist lists, making it easy to find you among the hundreds of other Artists uploading here.

You get the rights to self-approve your Creations and choose your own publication date in our Submission System.

FA/SA creations are always granted the best spots on our front page.

Our millions of visitors can filter out FA/SA only Creations in our vast Downloads Archives.

Are you good enough to make money?

If you are good enough to receive a promotion to Featured Artist you will begin to earn money from creating CC for the game you love. We pay fixed upfront fees based on quality and creation type - some of our best FAs earn several hundred dollars per month from what is considered a hobby!

So how can you take part?

In order to participate in our first Artist Draft set for October 1 all you need to do is submit your Sims 3 or Sims 4 Creations to our site using our Submission System (launching September 5 for Sims 4) here: http://submissions.thesimsresource.com. Our Artist Panel are always keeping an eye out for talent so don’t worry about not being noticed! You are free to use whichever CC Tool you feel most comfortable working with and your Creations will always remain free to download for everyone at all times.

What about TSR Workshop?

TSR Workshop for Sims 4 will soon be released to the public and allow for the creation of Clothing and Hairstyles with custom meshes. In the following months we will release new updates regularly as we unlock more Creation types such as Objects, Makeup, Skin tones and more.

Exciting times ahead!

Our Skype Chatrooms are already bubbling with activity among our resident Artists and many are currently playing with the game and CC. We are hard at work improving the site, creating a great Wiki resource with CC tutorials, developing TSR Workshop and building a unique CC Manager Tool to help you organize your Downloads - just to mention a few things you can look forward to in the coming weeks!

We look forward to welcome the first Artists to our FA/SA teams on October 1st!

We start today continuing a bit with some game pictures. Yesterday I was waiting for my personal screen shots from EA. Now that I have them I wanted to share my very pregnant Sim. There is actually an option for a pregnancy test if you think your Sim is expecting from the toilet.

You can tell by her plumbbob that she is not comfortable. And no it's about impossible to fix until she has that kid! As you can see improvements have been made to just what a pregnant Sim looks like. By the second picture she is over pregnant and really, really not comfortable.

All clothing is adjustable and becomes maternity clothing as soon as they start to “show”. Thought I would post the picture of the baby. Yes our bundle of joy FINALLY made an appearance. You can bottle or breast feed your baby. Breastfeeding brings up the familiar mosaic blur,but the option is there when you feed them.So now finishing up with that little tidbit we move on to more game play. I mentioned a bit about the children and options for them. The Base game for Sims 4 has a lot of things for a kid to do. As said before they can gain skills on musical instruments which include the violin, which is kid sized, and the piano.

I love that face. He is scrunching his face at the sound of his playing. That teddy bear in the background can be interacted with by the child.

They have all sorts of outdoor activities, some being interactive with adults. My favorite has to be the pirate ship. They walk the plank, climb throughout, and parents can interact by being a “sea monster”. It was very entertaining to play. Kids have homework before the first day of school so be sure to have them do it before they start to progress their grade faster. It’s in their inventory.

The transition from Baby to kid is done via the bassinet. I ran out of time to be able to see them transition to teens, so sorry I didn’t have more days to play. There is just so much to do and explore that 4 days of play is not enough.

I made 3 families to play with as I wanted to see how the neighbourhood and world works doing some multi tasking of my own. You can easily click on active households to play. So generally it is very easy to play several families at once. While it has been confirmed there is no actual story progression , you can turn aging on for the neighbourhood. Seeing the ease of playing several families by switching households and having more than one active in the neighbourhood at a time, you can pretty much make your own story progression. As you can see I have 3 green plumbbob lots all of which I played back and forth.If you look at the icons the first 3 are play, build/edit/ and an options menu for that lot. In the second set of icons you have the top one which is where you can travel anywhere in the neighbourhoods and a move option. You can move part or all of your family. You can also travel via your phone.

There are 2 worlds each having 16 playable lots which you can customize, bulldoze and make your own. That means 32 lots to choose from if you want to redo the entire thing. This does not include community lots already there. There is NO limit to objects on lots. Objects can be put on lots as much as you please. All objects seem to be available for both community and regular household lots. No separation of object sorting.

You can go from neighbourhood to neighbourhood using both community sections for both worlds. You can have friends in both worlds. If you wish to move your Sims to the other world you will not lose any friends or family ties. You can still travel to or phone family and friends from either world. Each of the sections you see in the world is a neighbourhood. Each neighbourhood is like an open world but you cannot travel past your neighbourhood without using travel options. It does prompt a loading screen, but it’s not a big deal, very short loading times here. The game runs smooth and I suspect it’s because they split the neighborhoods this way. You can change lot types to residential or commercial if you wish to have more neighbours or more venues. There are no rabbit holes in base game. Since the travel to worlds is so seamless I personally think I will make one world have most of the venues and one world be nothing but lots. I can do that if I choose.

Sims die via starvation, some extreme emotions, fire, old age and electrocution. Starvation is very hard to achieve and I suspect it’s because they have made these Sims smart. I didn’t get a picture of the Grim Reaper because no matter what I did to starve them, they decided to eat. From what I have seen from other simmers at camp the Grim Reaper comes with a tablet. Also didn’t notice any ghosts and not enough time to play to try to produce one. So I cannot confirm or deny their existence. Sims VIP has a great Video and write up here about the Grim Reaper and Death.

There is a night club and yes you can be a comedian. You can travel to the venues the same way as you travel to any other place via phone or in the neighborhood screen.This guy was bombing on stage and no one would pay attention after a while.

And on to objects . There is a little added extra. If you have registered your games with origin for Sims 3 you will get a plumbob lamp for each expansion you own and base game as bonus content for your game. So if you have not registered your games do this before installing Sims 4. They are a really nice bonus. :0

There is a photo of 800 of the objects as posted by ehaughts58 who says there are at least 1000 objects. Check out his pictures of the worlds. Very nice.

Not paying bills this time does not bring the repo man. Nope no repo man. They just shut off your lights and water until you pay the bill. Too real....Here are some random screens I took in game..

CLUTTER!!

In closing and before answering your FB questions I would like to stress that I had a lot of fun playing this game. And that’s what it’s all about the fun of it. There has been some community postings of concerns about Sims 4 and I ask that you remember that this is only a base game. Historically not everything comes with base game. With every Sims Series you get a brand new game with a different way to play from the last. The Sims team does read our comments . So while you may not see something you want, voice what you would like in a positive way. They do listen. There is also us here at TSR who will strive to get you CC as soon as we safely can. You’ll love the game, trust me.

**Facebook Questions**

There were some questions on Facebook that could not be answered but got some attention from gurus at Sims Camp. So while we do not have an answer for them we would like to extend a prize of a plumbbob headband to these Two People:

John Alves -I possibly have the most original question! In the previous games, I am talking from the Ambitions expansion pack mainly, but will The Sims team, when putting minds together in terms of future expansion packs, will we be able to go even more in-depth of our hobbies? Since a NEW Sims game is coming to the franchise, yes, I can see my Sim kicking the ball, doing different animations, but I would LOVE to be able to control my Sim, in doing different animations, like if he's kicking a ball, to be able to get a power/accuracy bar with the ability of kicking it as soft or as hard as I can... Also, when I feel like my Sim is good enough, he could then be part of a soccer league, to where not only his abilities in soccer playing would improve but him making new friends as well... Also, the chess tables... And I have been commenting on this since Sims 2, but instead of us just being able to see our Sims play chess, with the animations, shouldn't we be able to do their moves for them? Like, it being an actual chess game? That would be MUCH MORE exciting! These are just a few examples I would like to see in a future expansion pack, no matter how long it would take to make, could we expect to see these changes sometime in the near future? Or does this sound like something that Sims 5 would have?

Kari Knibbs - There have been so many mods that enhanced the sims 3. Have the creators of the sims thought to take inspiration from those when developing the story progression and how NPC sims function. I would love something like Master Controller build in.

Winners Of Questions Answered

Tammy Grimshaw-Winner of a Dragon Valley World - Where do the creators get their ideas and visions for their creations, especially clothing?

I asked that question of SimGuruLindsay who said they get it the same way us CC creators get it. Watching fashion articles, the internet and magazines. They try to incorporate those ideas into the game.

Kari Knibbs -Winner of the Barnacle Bay World - how will the loading screens effect sims that are left behind in the house lot? In the sims 2 when you would travel to a venue the time would keep going but when you got home the time was the same as you left.

As far as I noticed the time moves right along. So that if it's night when you leave the venue and get home it's night at home.

Ashley Cummings- Winner of a Plumbbob Headband - I'm wondering if the height of house or as most know the limit of floors, has been improved? In Sims 3 the max was 5 floors, so any idea if the limit is removed in Sims 4?

There right now is a 3 story limit shipping with base game. However these stories can be raised to 3 heights

I played for 4 days. I had the same attitude as I am a creator and that is the fun for me. However after I established my families and played for a while I was stunned by the facial expressions and interactions of my sims. I am blown away by the gameplay and I think you will be too.

Ashley Cummings- Can the Sims get depressed in this new version or go nuts ?Will there be new Traits?

There are indeed new traits from previous Sims Games. They can get really emotional and yes all of this is possible.

Nuria Márquez Almuiña - I want to know about heights. I really, really, really need short and tall sims for my illustrations. So far I have use teenagers to pass as short adults. But clothing is sooo restrictive!!! Well be have heights in Sims 4

I'm afraid there are no height sliders included in base game.

Margies Sims - Will there be more colour options in CAS coming. We are very limited to recolouring choices

If you are speaking about the demo that is just a "taste" of what will be shipping with base game. Many more options will be available.

Kari Knibbs - What are the cheats codes? lol Will it still be CTRL+Shift+C?

Still ctrl-shift-c and at the end of questions you'll find what is shipping with base game.

Fabiola Mo - I want to know more about the school system for kids and teens.

Like prior series they go to school, you don't go with them.

Kimbo Ras - What expansion packs should we anticipate?

I tried to get this one and they would not talk about anything but base game at this time. I am sure we'll find out soon enough.

Missie Napier Ward - Will we be able to create our own neighborhoods to add to the game?

Not with base game at this time. All of us at camp expressed the strong desire for this when asked. So I suspect they will be looking into it for the future.

Lorena Loza - What can u do with babies can u do something special?

There is a lot of interactions for babies. And for those of you who want a kid right away no cheat required to age them up right away and still keep the genetics.

Brenda Reginelli- I want to see different furniture and patterns for decoration and building purposes.

That's why you have TSR!

Sandra GM Groothedde- How nice to finally see the artists behind al that awesome work and creations...

Huggles and kisses. Thank You

Scooter Renee - Will you see the sim get into the car. And can they go in all the buildings.

To answer your question about cars. No I did not see any usable cars although they do drive in the neighborhood. So I suspect cars will be added later. As for the venues, there are no rabbit holes this time so all buildings are accessable.

Elle Caumont- Will Sims be able to have a home business like in Sims 2 - have their shop next door or downstairs - please let it be a yes.

Not with Base game.

Nerissa Reddick - Can we go from house to house like in the Sims two with out changing the main household and risk the other families moving out, having kids, or drastically changing your game like they do in sims 3. I don't mind a little change, but I loved building a neighborhood of families to play rather than just the one.

I did not notice sims moving out and switching between households is much, much easier now.

Lauren Burpee - Will there be integrated online features? For example, Can my friend be my neighbor?

Not in the base game. Base game will be stand alone. You can, however share households on the gallery. But nothing like simport.

Наталля Арлоўская -Do you know if we will be able to have the same amazing CC furniture that TSR has for Sims 3?

You better believe it! We are going to be on top of that for sure.

Donivan Johnson - Will our sims be able to go to the shops to buy clothes or do they already own it all in their wadrobe?

It's already in the wardrobe.

Katharina Dahringer- Will sims4 have weather?

Not with base game. Historically we get that in expansions.

Petra Poje -Gardens, how will gardens work?

Gardens can be planted in the boxes and containers. You will also able to plant in the ground. It works like it does in Sims 3.

Fabiola Mo -Can males have pregnancy in The Sims 4 ?

Not yet that I saw no.

Leonie Sibilska - why did they make Sims 4 so cartoony it make me not want to buy it, I think this is more of a downgrade to Sims 3 as a pose to an upgrade, who agrees?

Actually once you are in game they really don't look "cartoony". Their facial expressions are very distinct this time. As for the asthetics, that's why you have a CC community :)

Наталля Арлоўская -Will there be supernatural species?

Not with Base game.

Cheryle Gough Grylls - Still would love to know if they have split level building and L or U shaped stairs.

This is a no on the stairs, however the build tools are very flexible for sunken livingrooms and high walls.

Ari Crevan -Even if they dont have pools can swims go swimming in lakes/oceans or something like that?

Not with Base game.

Kelli Williams -Will there be more active Sims in the community to interact with? I always hated that, I could go to a venue in Sims3 and there would be no other sims there. No matter how many people lived in my town, everyone would gather at one or two different locations at a time.

There will be a lot of up close and personal interactions in Sims 4. They basically have made it so you no longer have Sims tapping their feet until another Sim goes through a door or hallway. I went to the venues and there were already plenty of people inside.

Sims 4 Cheats Shipping with Base Game

CTRL+SHIFT+C for the control Panel and the cheats are as follows

Help - Lists all available commands into the command consol. This will only list cheats available to players

resetSim {first name} {Last name} - Resets Sims

Fullscreen-Toggles fullscreen on and off

headlineeffects on/off-hides headline effects

|Death.toggle - Disables Death So sim won't die

FreeRealEstate off/on - Can be entered in the neighborhood/world. If on homes are free while active

motherlode - provides 50000 simoleans

kaching - provides 1000 simoleans

rosebud - provides 1000 simoleans

Pressing Shift + ] at the same time - enlarges objects

TestingCheatsEnabled true/false-does the following

cas.fulleditmode-allows all CAS abilities

Shift Clicking objects after testing cheats is typed in brings more interactions So Shift Click plus the following:

Shift Click on Sims- Reset Sims-resets sim

Shift Click on Sim- Add to Family - adds the Sim to current family

Shift Click on Sim- Cheat Motive>Make Happy - sets all motives to full and set mood to happy

As promised today we go over the classes for day 3. We started the day’s classes with Sim Guru Todd Stallkamp and Sims Guru Jonathan Richardson. We saw some rather funny Machinimas as the class started. They wanted to show what all was possible in the world of videotography and the Sims 4. I have to say that this was over this simmers head as they went on to discuss the ins and outs of toggles and key switches. But the likes of Minraed and Asia were there and they fully understood the inner workings of what was going on. The glee from them made us all excited. So I have to assume this is a good thing. I saw the way the camera adjusts and the new camera angles I am going to share some scans of settings that those of you that make Machinimas are sure to understand. This was shared at the class and deemed very useful:

So as you can see the class was a bit technical for me. **who struggles through screen shots** #epicfail.

Next to take the stage was Sim Guru Grant Rodiek. So on to the one thing that makes Sims 4 a cut above any other series they have done in Sims. The emotions. Now in talking about the emotions lets go back a bit to yesterday. I mentioned that they did not include the random sort with picking emotions. This is key to you as a player. What you choose when making your Sims will have a huge influence on your Sims Experience. A specific word used was algorithms. The intertwining of all the aspects of traits and aspirations.

Let’s start with a few definitions. These pictures are from the demo and not the actual game, but it’s a good representation to what we had in game.

The aspirations look like any other Sims game in term of definitions but don’t let that fool you. These are vital in the way they interact with their neighbours and household. Combining these with the traits section makes for some very interesting game play.

The Aspirations

·Athletic

·Creativity

·Deviance

·Family

·Food

·Fortune

·Knowledge

·Love

·Nature

These main aspirations all have branches so you may choose a specific aspiration with respect to the category. Choosing these wisely determines how the traits will be handled. I personally chose my traits first and then determined from those how I wanted to handle the Aspirations. It can mean the difference between a happy Sim and a miserable one.

TRAITS

Emotional

·Active-can become upset if they don’t exercise over time

·Cheerful-Happiest of Sims

·Creative-Inspired Easily (More about this later)

·Genius-Have the need to improve their mental state

·Gloomy-Tend to be sad but have the best inspirations when sad

·Goofball-Says it all. They tend to be very playful and need that to stay happy

·Hot-Headed-Tend to be angry Sims and they don’t like Sims who do mischief things

·Romantic-Flirty and get sad if they don’t have a romantic happening for a long period of time

·Self-Assured-Confident Sims

Hobby

·Art Lover-The Sims Love art and have special interactions pertaining to art

·Bookworm-Can Analyze books and get more pleasure from reading

·Foodie-Love watching cooking shows. Get upset with bad food

·Geek-Get tense when going long times without video games. Sci-fi makes them happy.

·Music Lover-This Sim is most happy listening to or playing music

·Perfectionist-Cannot stand to create anything that is of low quality.

·Childish-These Sims enjoy playing with their Children and all the interactions with Children. Are Happy when watching the kids network

·Clumsy-These Sims are very forgiving when they fail. They don’t ge3t bad moodlets from Failing. Not good at athletics.

·Glutton- These Sims eat anything including spoiled food

·Insane-They talk to themselves which tends to get funny reactions from other Sims.

·Lazy-They hate exercise and household chores. Better get a maid with this one.

·Loves Outdoors-Special interactions with other Sims about nature and of course love to be outdoors

·Materialistic-This Sims will want to show off possessions and gets annoyed when they don’t buy something new for a period of time.

·Neat-These Sims can actually go into a cleaning frenzy. Gets a very bad moodlet in dirty surroundings

·Slob- These Sims are known to eat from the garbage and think nothing about leaving a mess in the house

·Snob-The Sims benefit from being around other snobs. Will not have any fun watching TV that they consider beneath them like fishing.

Social

·Bro-Manly thing. Although I am going to use for my girl Sims. Who says a girl can’t be a bro? Loves sports and happy with other bros

·Evil-Become angry interacting with good Sims. Discusses Evil Plans with other Sims. A schemer.

·Family Oriented-These Sims have special interactions to boast about their family. They need to spend time with the family and get negative moodlets when they don’t.

·Good-These Sims do not react well to Evil Sims and may get a bad moodlet from the interaction

·Hates Children-can be mean and nasty around children. In a bad mood after try for a baby action.

·Loner-more prone to social rejection. Can become tense in social situations and do not like strangers

·Mean-gain confidence from winning a fight. Can be mean spirited and mischievous

·Non Committal-Have special interactions to discuss fear of commitment and likes to quit jobs as well as relationships often.

·Outgoing-These Sims need to socialize often and get powerful, powerful bad moodlets from no social interactions

Now these traits look familiar to any other Sims Series, but looking closer at them you can see by the definitions how they may interact with each other. It makes for a hilarious game play. You won’t see this right away rather when you start playing and interacting with neighbours and family over a few days. Get a feel for how to pay your Sim.

I never ever play Free will when playing Sims, but I found myself needing to play free will in this series. With that in mind I wanted to get screenshots of the babies for you all, so with my mind still stuck in Sims 3 I began giving the Sims traits sure to get a family. I gave the Mother the family aspiration and branched that off into the big happy family option. The Father I gave a family aspiration as well but gave him the successful lineage.

The traits for the parents were as follows:

Mother

Aspiration-Family-Big Happy Family

·Trait one-Cheerful, cause after all you have to be upbeat to take care of a bunch of kids

·Trait Two – Bookworm. I wanted a stay at home Mom, I know old fashioned but still what the heck. This will give her something more to do when they get old enough for school

·Trait Three – Neat. I wanted her to keep a tidy home

Father

·Aspiration-Family-Successful Lineage

·Trait One-Goofball, need to have help for Mom to entertain the kids

·Trait Two – Geek, I need for him to earn a good living

·Trait Three – Outgoing, wanted to see what an outgoing geek was like

I put them together and started immediately trying for babies. It started off a bit slow, but the more they woohooed (we weren’t getting pregnant) the more hilarious it became. It was non stop (we don’t have a lot of time to play here) woohooing until I could get pregnant. By the 4th time the Father shouts out WooHooHooHoo and does a dance and grabs her for another go round. Oh good, now looks like we’re pregnant. But She wouldn’t stop, I had to force them to stop she wanted more and was having way too much fun. But alas..we do need to earn a living dear.

Now I finally got him off to work and, leaving on freewill, watched what she would do. She talked to neighbours outside her door. One neighbour made her mad, he hates kids. She brought another one in to see the new crib, then they ended up socializing for hours. She was a neat freak so she was picking up things and continuing to socialize.

No sooner did the father come home from work all interacted with each other. The neighbour left. He was in a bad mood as his geeky trait meant work and no video game play time. So he fired up his video game and told her about his day while she cooked. And on it went. The emotions drive them in a way that’s hard to explain until you play the game. They were multi tasking. It was fun to watch. Not only were they multi tasking but their faces were changing with each emotion showed. Not a generic change but facial expresions.

One of the nicest changes is that as a child grows you can change their aspirations like real life. We all want to be a fireman when we grow up but rarely do. Same applies here. I think this is a good change.

And with that we’re starting to tread into the waters of game play. There are a lot of things to go over with this as there is so much to do in Sims 4.

We can start with Careers. Each career has 2 branches. Kind of like in Sims 3 where you can go 2 ways in music and entertainment.So that when you choose a career you need to be sure which branch, or path, you want to take. Again this relies heavily on the traits you have chosen for your Sim. I chose the wrong geeky path in the tech guru branch and my Sim hated work. I left my Mother Sim at home and she wanted to work and was most unhappy. The bookworm trait had her wanting something in that type of career. So again trait driven and emotionally driven. And I don’t mean emotional like wants in the Sims 3 I mean downright making faces when they think about it.

You can get a career from your phone, computer or directly from the panel. The main career choices are as follows:

Astronaut

Writer

Tech Guru

Entertainer·

Painter

Criminal

Culinary

Secret Agent

Each of these has a sub Branch so that you have 2 path choices. For instance the Astronaut has the paths Space Ranger or International Smuggler. Entertainers can be Musicians or Comedians. Yep that’s right Comedians. There is stand up comedy at the club.

The Sims have Whims now, something like Sims 3 wishes. You can earn traits that are only available from fulfilling whims. You can also gain something akin to Lifetime wish rewards called Satisfaction Points from Whims. They look like potion bottles if you have supernatural.Courtesy of SimsVIPhere is a full list of these rewards:

The one thing they gave us in base game that makes me happy is the ability to plant a garden. You buy the containers and from the containers you can purchase starter seeds. You tend the garden as usual watering and such. It’s a great fun thing to do for Sims with the love the outdoor trait among others.

Pack of Starter Seeds:

·Vegetable – Carrot, Spinach and Mushroom

·Flower – Daisy, B Bell, and Chrysanthemum

·Herb – Basil and Parsley

·Fruit – Plantain, Grape and Apple

Now the plants look really nice in the garden, I could see my retired elders having a lovely garden to take care of. You can harvest the fruits and veg for recipes later.

Another thing they are including in base game is fishing! So from out of the box you will be able to fish and gain skill for it.

Sims gain skills just by doing in Sims 4 so that you can gain skills by everyday activities like playing computer games and cooking. You still have learning from the TV and books. I found it delightful that there are new skills to go along with the new emotions and traits. Skill books include Mischief and Comedy. I was really interested to find out how these played out. Unfortunately ran out of playing time.

Looking across the top of what you can buy from the bookcase are the following categories:

·Children

·Fantasy

·Non-Fiction

·Poetry

·Romance

·Sci-Fi

·Mystery

·Skills

·Emotional

Generally when you buy from any storage unit it gets placed in the Sims inventory until you have them put it away. So if you buy a book from the bookcase check your inventory for it and have them put it away so all the Sims can use it.Skilled Sims can mentor other Sims to gain skill.

There is also a work bench shipping with base game that they can gain the handiness skill with. Upgrades to appliances and plumbing gives positive reactions to Sims having certain traits.

Décor objects also have attributes that you can turn off and on to gain room moods. Like when you see a painting In Sims 3 that has a décor bonus of +++ and in Sims 2 when they rated the room 10 points. This décor feature sets the room “mood” . It inspires them. If your Sim is inspired they will perform better. They can get inspired to exercise, paint, create and more. You can click on the décor to turn this ability on or off in a room. Only certain Décor objects have this so you’ll have to experiment.

Let’s talk about pregnancy for a moment. Having had kids of my own I can appreciate the discomfort of the last trimester of being pregnant. The don’t tell me I look beautiful or I’ll smack you discomfort. The back-aches and never ending stomach where the only thing you want to do is be able to tie your own shoes.

Sims never really got that in prior series and the nicely rounded convenient tummies gave the illusion that something was going on like a nice safe Sims baby in exactly 3 days time. Well not this time around. The Sims LOOK pregnant. They grab their back like a real pregnant woman when they are uncomfortable. The Sims remains uncomfortable in that last trimester no matter what you do. Then just when you think it’s over as you were using the counter they give you like a countdown to baby, the baby doesn’t come. You wait another day. No baby. When will this beast be born! I want my Sim in comfort already! Sure enough when you least expect it that little bundle of joy finally makes an appearance. For some of the other fan sites this took 3 days, some 4 and some, like me more. So it’s not a set time to when that baby is coming, only an estimate which is a sometimes amusing, yet painful, thing to watch. When they go into labor, they really go into labor big time. A huge difference from any prior Sims series. The babies are cute, look like the parents and can be born at home if you own the basinet. If not they can be at the hospital for the baby. They have LEGS! Yes legs. Finally. They kick and everything.

Tomorrow we will begin Part 3 and more about game play along with answers to the questions on Facebook and announcing the winners of the prizes.

Before I post all the news and what the game is about I want to take the time to explain how I played. When I first played the game I played as a player not a creator. I wanted to get a feel for the game without looking constantly at what I can make. Creator drawback I suppose. So when I tell you that this game has brought back our funny, personable simmies I mean it. I laughed so hard at times I had tears streaming down my face. This game has really brought the emotions and reactions of our Sims together. The biggest change I liked from a players standpoint was multi tasking. That’s right our Sims can now multi task!

Today we’ll go over Master Classes for the first 2 days. Tomorrow we will cover the last classes and actual game play. This is just part of everything I have to tell you so let’s get started.

Day 1 we talked about CAS and build mode.

We started with Sim Guru Jill Johnson. Now you have seen a lot of CAS so you may think there is nothing more to say, well think again! The walk styles you have seen, and for those of you with the demo, get ready because they added more to the game. There will be at least 2 more walk styles. Everything can be randomized including the looks. Those of you with the demo probably have already seen this.The coolest change is that you can use all the clothing for all the categories, so that if you see something in everyday or party that you want to wear to formal you just click off the sort. This is also available in the demo.

The one thing you cannot randomize is the traits. Because your game play will be really reliant on those, they want the player to think about their choices. Unlike Sims 3, the choices make a lot of difference in the way your game plays.And when I say a lot I mean a LOT. They play off each other’s emotions.

Genetics are very distinctive in Sims 4. Messing with genetics is fun and the kids come out actually looking like the parents this time. There is a very intricate working of the genetic system. When your Sim makes a baby, it looks like the parents. You will have the ability to change aspirations as they age up. So that your child may have aspirations more along the lines of a child, but change as they age.

We had a chance to see all the clothing and all the ages of Sims. Elder clothing is much improved so that if you want a dowdy elder that can be done as well as stylish elders. You can age your Sim up right in CAS to see what they will look like once they become an elder. You can also change genders with keeping the attributes you gave the Sim in the first place. The kids are very believable and cute. They have clothing more in line with RL kids.

They take into account gender and age attributes for each aspect of the genetics as well. Interactive music has been changed in CAS as well as the camera angles so that they are different than the demo. This helps in knowing where you are and what you want to do while you are in CAS. The voice sliders were done by a voice programmer who wanted to give as much range as possible. A voice programmer, who knew?

Later in the day we moved to build mode with Sim Guru Aaron Houts and Sim Guru John Berges. Now again, you have seen a lot of this, but until you actually get to PLAY with it you cannot appreciate just how cool it is. The roofs are adjustable. I don’t mean adjustable like you can slide them I mean adjustable like you can make them round, oriental, just about any shape you want. Using shift you can change each individual side of the roof as well.

Then moving on to the foundations. You don’t lay down a foundation like in previous games; you build it after the walls. With a slider.Also, I didn’t get a chance to try it, but we were told that you could make a sunken living room by deleting the foundation in parts.

The windows are all adjustable as everyone has seen but, you can intersect all wall décor with the windows. There are some cute window plants I used that look great. All walls can be raised 3 adjustable heights. Individually for each story of the lot as well. There are windows to fit each size. The columns adjust to the wall size so you don’t have to pick columns that will fit. They all fit. They also snap to walls and fences.

There are rounded foundations, but before you ask, no there are no rounded walls only fences. Which means you can have rounded fences and porches. There is crown moulding that can be evenly distributed with the shift key, very pretty. The roofs have an adjustable siding that can be colored and thickened.

For all you modern lot builders who have screamed about pools, there is in the ground finished fountains that will give the same effect as if you were using a pool to stylize your lot. They are very nice and come with water spouts, many many water spouts.

As I started out as a builder in my Sims “career” I can appreciate the flexibility of the build tools. There really is no need for a CFE cheat with all the tools built right in. The flexibility to make a distinct playable lot is all there. The one drawback was that there are no terrain tools. You have terrain paints but no tools. All of us voiced our dismay over this and they are listening to us. It won’t be in base game but added later.

Before anyone gets upset, a lot of things didn’t come in Sims 3 base game either. Just think back. We did get them in time and they really do listen to us. The same is happening with Sims 4. Just be polite and voice your concerns. They do listen.

Here is a scanned list of hotkeys we were given in build mode.

Moving along to after the build and on to decorating the lot. All that clutter you saw in previews is there! They also revamped the categories in buy mode so that there are distinctive categories for each thing. They noticed once CC became abundant and they had many EPs out in the Sims 3 that everything was thrown in Misc and very hard for the player to find. Décor has the biggest revamp with an actual category for clutter. There are no collection files as of yet, but then again this is only base game. No need just yet.

As I went through the objects to decorate my lot I have to be honest. I was still trying to think like a player not a CC creator. Which is a hard thing when you’re used to saying “Oh I need that for this lot. I’ll go make it”. I took and looked through each and every category, again staying in the player mode, and was actually delighted at some of the stuff they have for children! Children will again be able to use and gain skills with musical instruments. There is a kid size violin. And yes they sound like your kid when they are first learning an instrument. Screeching violin strings and all. There are outdoor play items that the parents can interact with the kids. One is a pirate ship. The Pirate ship has way cool interactions. Sim Kid gets in and plays and the interaction pops up for the adult to be a sea monster. Too funny. There is no swing set but you really don’t miss it with all the other toys.

The bookcase and toy chest were the 2 items I put on the lot so checked the interactions with them. The toy box has toys you can buy by clicking on it. Same with books and the bookcase. You can purchase what you need directly from the storage units. This is convenient in terms of play.

Moving on to decorating the kitchen the counters have a predefined setting if you want to use it. All cabinets can be elongated to fit larger walls and they have different designs available with a click. They don’t show in the catalogue so you have to play with that once you get the game. It’s very cool.

Now mind you I was supposed to be PLAYING not building at this point in the day. But I just could not for the life of me tear myself away from the uber cool lot I was making. I know, I know, I said I was trying to be a player, but the tools….OMG the tools! My creator self locked my player self out this first day like I needed some sort of exorcist to knock my head back into place as it spun round and round in this crazy wide eye building frenzy I had going on. Thank god I had 3 more days.

Day 2 Animations and Modding. That’s right actual Modding info!

Now the full day 2 had the classes I was most interested in. How the Sims work and how easy it will be to Mod the game. Are they going to help us modders this time around? Why are there no toddlers? All of that was to be in day 2.

We started the day playing the game, and yes I actually left the building alone to get a feel for the game. I’ll go over game play a bit tomorrow.

The first Masterclass was with Sim Guru Marion Gothier who is a master in the animation dept. It was interesting to see just what goes into animating our simmies and all that went in to each individual interaction they have. The added emotions means that there was a lot more bullet points in the coding. It was very intricate in what they have to do to actually have all the interactions the Sims have now. Contrary to what the layman or player thinks you can’t just “turn on a switch” to make things work. They can lay a foundation for say, toddlers, but it’s some very complicated coding this time around to get it to work. Leaving off the toddlers in base game was a decision that was not made lightly.So why was the decision made? The added features to the Sims themselves is a complicated web of design. Toddlers will have to have their own interactions separate from the Adult Sims to make it believable. Kids have a mix. After seeing the actual plans they have to follow to make the Sims this realistic in their interactions I totally get it. We all voiced they should be more transparent and explain to you all as they did to us. Once you look at the animation bit you “get it” so much better. The intricate coding all spelled out for every single action to make the multi tasking and interactive emotions work is immense. It’s nothing to have over 100 bullet points for something simple as going potty and using the tablet.

They have given us so much in our Sims this time it’s unbelievable. There is multi tasking which they were keen on adding. Also several skills can be obtained at once coinciding with the multi tasking. For instance I can put 2 Sims in a room. One of those Sims wants to run on the treadmill, watch TV and talk to the other Sim at the same time. They can now do that along with getting the Athletic Skill, Charisma Skill, and whatever they are watching on TV (say gardening) skill at the same time. To top it off the other Sim can be exercising as well and talking to the first Sim. It’s genius! This took a lot of thought in the animation process. The game play is flawless in this respect. It also makes for more believable Sims.

Sim Guru Marion explained this well.She even took the Sims animations to Maya, for those of you non creator types this is a program used for building meshes and building game animation. One of the best around. I found it interesting to see the animation process from start to finish. The bullet points look like something out of access spreadsheet with boxes and pointers all meticulously done so they coincide and do not conflict each other. To be honest I had my geek on for this. They made movies of people jumping up and down, holding things, all sorts of Real Life interactions we take for granted every day so they could study them and put them into a code that would work. They watched how people do several things at once like eat and talk and drop something at the same time to pick it up while still talking. It was amazing what they studied in the way of Real Life movements to make this work.

After making and watching numerous videos of movements they then had to code it into a game. As said above it was akin to an access spreadsheet with boxes and pointers and sliders to where exactly the movements would go. Then testing the interactions with Maya to see them move and see if the coding worked. Think of this thousands of times over and over to get what they wanted in multi task. There are something like 10,000 animation types in the Sims 4. Multiply that by thousands of interactions. It’s amazing. They have outdone themselves in the animations coming with Sims 4.

Now on to what I am most excited about for the modding community. Most players will not be interested in this. But those of us in the modding community are going to be excited. Now keep in mind that historically modding to EA and modding to us is usually a totally different thing. Modding to them could have meant adding more colors to their objects. So I waited with baited breath to see if my dream of a cooperation of sorts was maybe happening. As Sim Guru Darren Styles and Sim Guru Lindsay Pearson took the stage I held my breath. The opening of “We want to set a foundation for Mods and Script Mods for the sims 4……” I thought I was going to scream. It was like being on a game show and winning a million bucks!

So it was INDEED going to be about actual real life modding and the modding community!I had questions, loads of questions and couldn’t wait for them to open this up. Basically throughout the class most of my questions faded to the back as they explained they were giving us a road map of sorts of game coding and inside workings of the object/clothing codes. Their reasoning behind this is that even though they legally cannot go all out and help us, they can give us a starting point. This will help them in turn as we have the foundation to be in a position as to not break the game in the learning process. They can keep a better eye on us so when a player contacts support they will know where to send them or help themselves. They have finally accepted that Modding is going to happen and they are better off doing what they can for us legally than totally ignoring our efforts.

So what does this mean for the modding community? It means we will have CC within days not months of game release. There will be a modding forum on the Official Sims 4 website they hope all of us in the modding community making the tools will use to discuss amongst ourselves and help each other out in the tool making process. They will have a tech watching in case they see us maybe moving in a direction of “break the game code”. How much help we will actually get from them is yet to be seen, but at least they are giving us the initial road map to get started without having to tear apart the files ourselves. It’s a great day in the modding community in a world where most gaming is open source with gamers getting mods from the beginning.

We were pointed to the game options where you can see the mods and script mods options right in the game. You have the option to turn off script mods as they are deemed the most dangerous beta to use. Not to worry, there are some very good script modders in the community who test the script mods extensively before release. Everything is going back to .package files for us and will be installable via my documents.

I asked about the xml coding like in sims 3. This has already been confirmed to be python based, but there will still be some xml coding in game as well. Now those players who have no idea what I am talking about, this has to do with making simple mods for the game. It has to do with game tuning.

So here in the next 2 weeks they will be posting a Custom Content Technology Document right on the forum for modding in the Official Sims 4 Forum. All the data formats will be on this document. They plan to update this as the game progresses. This simmer tried to get her hot little hands on that document while there, but of course it was a no.

Creators Camp! The experience, even if I could not share anything I have seen, was enough for any simmer. I would like to share a bit about camp and the people I met.The Sims community of fans and players have some of the best people. I’ll share some of the most memorable times. This by no means is a full list of people there, only people I had personal moments with.

SimsVIP- All around goof ball and great person. You get what you get with her and I loved every minute of it! I made a lifelong friend here. Most memorable moment was having a drink out by the pool at the hotel late into the night and having the automatic sprinklers wet us down good! It was a missed “Kodak” moment. All the fun aside what a hard worker! She will have some good stuffs come tomorrow. The Sims community has a real asset with SimsVIP.

The SimsSupply- James! I can’t say enough about what a nice person he is. We sat close to each other during our game play laughing and joking about our simmies and lots. We came to the conclusion neither one of us could leave the build mode too long! Most memorable moment was when he grabbed me for a picture at the Sims 4 logo screen. Too funny.

Pekesims- Whenyou meet up at these things you expect to meet people full of hugs and excitement. Pekesims was the most enthusiastic out of all of us. Forever laughing at my jokes and anyone that laughs that hard at my crappie sense of humor has already won me over. Most memorable moment? When he picked me up off the ground with a great big hug and said “I LOVE your stuff!” Call me vain.

Minraed – SIFF Head she is an amazing person.Most interested at Camp to get all the info she could for her precious Machinima Makers. The Machinima community is lucky to have such an advocate for art. Minraed and I go way back in the community. She calls me her CC slave…too cute. This was our first face to face meeting so very exciting. Most memorable moment was when she met me at the airport as soon as I got through customs and we realized we lost Rachybop someplace.

SimsNetwork, snw – Freezer Bunny Lady! I will forever think of her as the freezer bunny lady. I met her at the Simmers Meetup in London this year the first time. At Camp she was loads of fun and we passed around the freezer bunny like it was the most precious thing in the world. Unless you are a simmer you would never understand. Most Memorable Moment was when she let me wear the freezer bunny finger puppets.

The Sims Series – The Brazilian Guy. THAT guy, why are we talking to him? Microphone in your face…OK we’re done.Sims VIP said it all. Seriously though he was a very good sport with all the teasing he had to put up with. I think the thing I like most is the mix of Portuguese and English in his videos so everyone can enjoy them around the world. Most memorable moment involved James, me and SimGuruGraham. You’ll see, don’t want to spoil all his fun before he airs videos. Just be watching.

Rachybop – yes the sweet cute all around nice person we all have come to love. From her candy tasting to Sims Videos she is well worth a watch. In person she is just as cute and nice as she is in her videos. Most memorable moment? When I told her a couple of us were going to throw her in the pool. The look on her face was priceless. And no we didn’t… #toocutetodrown

Sim Cookie – Another Simmer I met at the Simmers Meetup first, although did not have a chance to talk to him much there. He was another fun person to be around. Full of smiles and an infectious good mood he lit up the room. Most memorable moment was when we took our first group photo I was laughing so hard with him that it was a good thing they took3 shots so they got me facing front and not him.

Ruthless_kk – Ruth is a great builder and genuinely nice. Her laugh is one of those laughs you can hear over and over because it’s a very cool sounding laugh. Most memorable moment with Ruth was when she said she was very glad to meet me and meant it. Ruth that meant the world to me J

Chrillsims –Shy but yet we all sucked him into our madness. We left no one standing to the sidelines in this Sims Encrusted Fiasco. We were like whirlwind of craziness all with one goal….to PLAY THAT DANG GAME. My most memorable moment with Chrill was when I told him we were all now a gang. He belonged to our gang. He smiled a great big smile. Was priceless.

AsiaShaMecca-On the team at SF Magazine. Another person I have spoken to many times but never met in person. I really enjoyed meeting her and there were hugs all around. She is an absolutely beautiful person! Most memorable moment was when I broke a nail. Gals you know how that is, baby them, grow them, and in that one split second RIP goes the nail. She looked at me as if it were just a snag and handed me nail glue. Sounds trivial but was a moment shared between nail growers.

BillSims-Always has a smile. Really. That is the one thing I can say about Bill. It’s nice to be around a happy person. Most memorable moment I can’t talk about too much but involved Tylenol. Thanks Bill!

SimFans – My sidekick. My bud, my dude, my friend. We took a lot of breaks together to get warm outside. They had the air conditioner on a freeze setting. I felt like I was in an Alaskan Winter. Most memorable moment I was talking with SimGuruGraham and he poked me to go outside. Priceless. HAHAHA. Let’s see…SimGuruGraham vs My Bud….no contest :p

Sarademoor1- I end my simmers list with Sara. A heart full person with a personality that is so endearing.Her most memorable moment with me was the night we all had to say goodbye. Tears were flowing everywhere and with her you just wanted to hold her and say “we WILL see you again”. Huggles Sara.

SimGuruRiley- Very upbeat, very fun. Favorite Moment was all of it with her. I can’t pick a favorite moment. She enriched the whole thing a hundred times over. Way to go EA for letting us have her for the week. Love the tattoos!

SimGuruHydra-Very helpful person. She was the one who came and got us everyday for the walk to EA Offices. My favorite moment was in the morning when she would say “Is everyone here?” and we would always be missing one. She makes funny faces. :p

Sara who is not a guru- Sara is EA Staff and says “I am not THAT SimGuruSara” hmmm SimGuruSara2? Come on twitter and play with us! My favourite moment was a shared dinner and conversation. She knows.

SimGuruGraham-What a down to earth nice man. My most memorable moment was talking about Geeky stuff. Not so much the Sims Game as it was just pure geek. I mean the “out there no one understands what the heck we are talking about” programming geek. I thought about putting on his badge and sneaking into the geeky part of EA for Sims 4. But I think the height difference would give me away. Not to mention I want to get invited back…Darn…

Thanks for the memory Graham.

I have loads more memories but I cannot share them today. I will be summarizing all of the Game data for you all tomorrow. I leave you with this. You will be pleasantly as surprised as we were.

We have the winners of Select Artist Creations for June! Sorry we are a bit late with this! We will be changing this a bit and looking at overal quality of creations since we have so much talent at TSR. It's hard with our Select Artists to choose one creation in particular. We urge you to browse their minisites for loads of quality items.

We are happy to announce a new round of Artist promotions! If you want to be on this list and even make money from uploading here as a Featured Artist, all you have to do is start submitting your creations. We will notice any Artists that stand out, we promise :)

Coming up to the E3 gaming conference in June, there has been a lot of buzz from the SimGurus about the Sims 4 series release. As Steve reported from gamescon, CAS is going to feature manipulations of just about every part of a sims body. The Official CAS Trailer was released last week and went into detail about what is going to be possible. Built in sliders so to speak. You can view last week's CAS video here:

Today EA released the build function Official Trailer. It features manipulation we only ever had with a CFE cheat and a lot of Custom Content. This is going to be exciting for aspiring and veteran builders as it opens a whole new avenue to creating. The new build features areamazing, different wall heights, adding the foundation later, moving the whole building, placing windows up and down. You can find the Official Video here:

The internet was recently rocked by the announcement of a critical vulnerability in OpenSSL dubbed Heartbleed. Libraries provided by OpenSSL are used by approximately two thirds of companies on the internet to secure their communication. Companies across the internet are now working to both patch the vulnerability as well as take appropriate precautions against any potential exploits of the vulnerability. This vulnerability has been given the CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) identifier of CVE–2014–0160.

Because the vulnerability may have exposed private keys used for encrypting traffic between TSR, you and third parties we have issued a new certificate and made sure that our encryption software is patched. We have also made sure that third parties have patched and mitigated the problem on their end.

There is no indication of data being leaked because of this vulnerability but as a precaution we recommend that you change your account password. If you have any questions or concerns about this please email support@thesimsreource.com.

We are monitoring things closely and are working on ways to further improve security on TSR.

We are happy to announce the beta test of our new amazing search engine. We know many of you were frustrated with our previous search engine that often gave irrelevant results and made it hard to find exactly what you're looking for. We encourage you all to take our new search engine for a spin and let us know what you think of it. We will post more information about how you can use it shortly, but rest assured it is very powerful and allows for very complex search queries!

To make sure we keep up with the mobile trend we are now rolling out a responsive version of the site. This means if you shrink the browser window to a size smaller then 500 pixels in width the content on the page will adapt and look very organized and streamlined, but optimized for viewing in a mobile phone. For VIP users we have made sure the add to basket button is visible on all pages so you can add files when you're out and download them when you get home.

This is a public beta so please report any pages that look weird or messed up. Please note that the responsive version hides a few features of the site in case you find something is missing in the menues or on download pages.

Enjoy TSR on your mobile phones!

Note: If the page looks weird it is due to cached CSS in your browser and on our servers. Please allow 2 hours from the posting of this news post for the responsive version to be fully functional.

We are happy to announce a new round of Artist promotions! If you want to be on this list and even make money from uploading here as a Featured Artist, all you have to do is start submitting your creations. We will notice any Artists that stand out, we promise :)

Hi everyone! We just wanted to let you know we are trying out a new ad solution and that the site might load a bit slowly at times while we're finetuning this. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience. VIP members will remain unaffected by this of course!

We are happy to announce that we have relaunched Simspiration, our inspirational Sims Magazine. First out is a holiday issue, showcasing a lot of great content that you can go ahead and download for free after reading! Go here for more information.

Here's wishing all of our members and visitors a very Merry Christmas or Holiday Season, whichever best suits your beliefs :)

We've had an interesting year what with being in Cologne for the big launch of The Sims 4 and then changing TSR to a completely free resource. Now we can look forward to 2014, the year of The Sims 4, and all the excitement and challenges that will bring us.

We've added a new filter to our downloads browse pages. You can now sort out downloads based on a specific Theme. Compared to earlier Themes we now have a myriad to choose from and more content will be added to them as we wade through our massive database. You can find the new Themes menu is available to the left of the Subcategory menu on the downloads browse page. Hope you'll be able to find some unexpected content this way! :)

Baby it's Cold Outside! (Ok, so in some parts of the world it's not very cold at all, but it is here, so just agree with me!) And when it's this cold, we need something warm and cheerful... like a new Facebook Cover Photo showing your Sims celebrating the holidays!

Take a screenshot in one of your Sims games (Sims 2 or Sims 3) that best portrays your Sims in the Holiday spirit. Show them hosting a gift giving party, or having a snowball fight, or sipping hot cocoa on the front porch. Your shot can be anything related to Sims celebrating in the cold, but it must be PG-13.

Entries must be submitted by 10PM EST on Sunday, December 22, 2013. Winners will be announced by Thursday, December 26, 2013.

- The first prize winner will see their screenshot on our Facebook page as our cover image and will also receive a full month of VIP access to the site (no advertisements, use of the download basket, etc).

- Second place will get two weeks of VIP access.

- Third place will get one week of VIP access.

(If the winner is already a VIP, the time will simply be added to the number of days left on their current account.)

NOTE: Facebook cover photo size is 850x315 and our logo will be on top of the bottom left corner of the image.

We've finally fixed the login bug many of you have experienced. It showed many of you as being logged in, but made it impossible to post comments or use VIP features without logging out and back in again first.

We've added a nice and clean lightbox feature for displaying the full size image on the details page, it also allows you to look through the entire album in fullsize mode.

And we've done some other small tweaks and fixes as well - hope you enjoy what we're doing!

We hope you are enjoying the now free TSR and the tons of quality content we know you are downloading.

We have spent a few days now fixing some of the bugs reported to our staff. The following has now been taken care of:

- Ads hiding the top navigation (the navigation is no longer fixed to the top as a result of this)- Keep me logged in cookie errors (showed you as logged in although you weren't)- Stories and Screenshots on profile pages- Stories and Screenshots admin links in account menu- Profile blog index looked broken- Uploading images to blog entries fixed- The details page now indicates which game the creation is for in the description- Plus many other smaller fixes.

Today we are celebrating a milestone in the long history of The Sims Resource, taking the bold decision to remove our Subscription model and return to being a free site!

With advancements in advertising revenue streams and having negotiated direct advertising deals and sponsorships, we believe that now is the right time to replace our subscriptions with a 'freemium' model instead.

Version 9 of the Sims Resource is now live and gives users unparalleled access to all of the 852,000+ downloads available for The Sims games, including our Featured Artist creations that have previously been locked away for subscribers. You don't even need to create an account or even log in, just turn up, browse and download anything you like with no restrictions.

Sites like TSR have substantial overheads with bandwidth fees and masses of online storage space. We also pay our small army of Featured Artists to create some of the highest quality creations you will find in the Sims community. We think that our new site design, which incorporates additional ads when downloading, will cover these costs and provide a future for TSR and our amazing archive of 14 years worth of custom content creation, for years to come.

For those wishing to experience the site at its very best and who are willing to make a small contribution towards the running costs, we are introducing a VIP Membership which allows users to browse the site free from any advertising and to make use of the download basket and high-speed dedicated servers that used to be reserved for our Subscribers. They also get to download with a single click from the browse pages. These benefits cost just $2.99 per month, a great deal compared to the old Subscription rate of $8 per month. You can see the VIP area and experience the ease of the download basket on our VIP Preview Page.

We would like to thank you all for your continued support for TSR and hope that you like these changes and the new website. Feel free to share you comments with us to help us improve further. Although you no longer need to log in to download, you will need to log in to post in comments, guestbooks and the forums. We have started a forum thread for feedback and bug reports for the new website.

This article is a challenge. Create a Sim and Build Mode were right up there on people's wish list for information. If I tell you this is about sitting in chairs and walking, you’re unlikely to be impressed, but if you are really interested in Sims 4 I urge you to read, I found the whole subject matter fascinating!

I can't help but feel like a salesman while writing this article though. Some of you might see it as a shameful promotion of Sims 4 in trying to convince you that it is better than Sims 3. Well, that's not my job (leave that to EA marketing). All I can do is pass on my experience and the opinion I formed while at Sims Camp, it is of course for you to make your own assumptions from what you see.

Me personally? I really liked what I saw and was drawn in by the depth of the technical changes and the effort the development team were clearly putting in to this product. I only wish every Sims fan could have seen the presentation we saw from Marion Gothier who gave us the 'Principles of Animation' Masterclass. Most of you would have found it fascinating, I'm sure.

The difficult thing for me here is explaining what we saw without the benefits of the animations and research Video Marion had on hand, but I'll do my best with my mock-ups made in Sims 3!

Principles of Animation

Every single animation in TS4 is new, nothing has been ported over from any previous game and it soon becomes apparent why that would not have worked. The principles of the animation of Sims in TS4 are that they are less robot and more human. Sims have smoother, more natural behaviour motions with vastly improved routing. Group socials and multitasking are two ways that Sims look and feel more human than ever before.

In TS3, Sims could only walk in a straight line, making slight angle adjustments at turning points if necessary. In TS4, Sim can walk in a full 360 degree turn. They can also sidestep, turn while walking and manoeuvre into a tight space. Stepping and turning can be done at the same time so a Sim getting up out of a chair no longer needs to stand, then shuffle to the direction they want to head, then start walking in a straight line. TS4 Sims will raise themselves out of the chair, turn themselves accordingly and start walking in a single, fluid motion, not only making the whole process quicker but looking very realistic. In fact, there are 60 different animations for a Sim stepping and turning in different ways alone!

Sitting is something that has had a major overhaul and seating placements can now be placed on almost anything. We may be lucky enough in future to see Sims sat on counters, tables or even walls! Almost all animations that we have come to expect from a standing Sim can now be made while sitting as well. We watched a Sim multitasking at a dinner table with another Sim. In between eating, the food was placed back on the table to allow for gesturing while talking. Drinks are picked up and put down as needed and while all this is going on, the Sim is twisting in his seat to face the other Sim while talking, or facing forward while eating. It doesn't sound much but when you see it in game it makes you realize how cardboard our past and even current Sims behave.

Another example was given with the storytelling animations. When a Sim tells a story they can gesture wildly, and each story has 3 sections which can have different animations of gestures so it might start out well but end up with little response from the audience, resulting in a failed gesture of disappointment for example. Importantly though, we were shown a Sim telling this story and gesturing while standing, sitting on a chair and even sat on a barstool with his feet on the stool rail. Animations are truly flexible and can be used far more diversely in the game.

Sims Camp

Welcome to my next Sims 4 article from Sims Camp in Cologne, this time looking at Build and Buy Mode. It's been really hard keeping quiet about all the great things I learned back in August, but release embargoes have made talking about this stuff off limits... Until now!

Aaron Houts, Designer of the Sims 4 Build Tool, gave us a presentation and demo of how Build/Buy works in Sims 4. There is still a lot we don't yet know about and of course, this stuff that we think we do know might change before release. EA are drip feeding us info so expect more soon. Apologies for the image quality, we were restricted to photos of a projected screen so had to make the best I could of them.

The community seems quite split right now on its love/hate relationship with Sims 4, long before they are really able to make a fair judgement, but that's natural, given the limited information available. Let's try and balance that right now by telling you that during this presentation I noted no less than 15 'WOW' moments from the group in my notes, and it pretty much sums up Build Mode.... WOW!

Sims 4 is built on an entirely new game engine which has allowed the developers to rethink the way Build Mode works. They felt that some players felt intimidated by the complexity or sheer workload of creating their own stunning homes in previous games. Many admitted to playing their entire family in a one box house with everything in the same room (sounds familiar). At the same time, EA respected the deep customization that experienced builders wanted. The result was a complete rework of the system to make Build/Buy accessible to all.

While at Sims Camp getting hands on with The Sims 4 we were also given a demo and hands on time with the upcoming and final Expansion Pack for The Sims 3, 'Into the Future'. Now in my humble opinion, EA couldn't win here, whichever way they showed us the games. If they started with the Sims 3 EP we would have probably wanted them to get on with it and 'show us Sims 4 already!' But they chose to show us Sims 4 before the Sims 3 EP and I have to admit, it felt a bit dated, even though the future is what this pack is all about. After looking at the detail and modernity of Sims 4, Sims 3 feels like it's had its day and might have been better shown first, but like I say, they couldn't win.

Anyway, let's look at this EP positively as I know many people will continue with their Sims 3 game long after Sims 4 graces this world and they will want to finish on something that enhances their gameplay, and it's fair to say that time travel can indeed provide.

Now given that this event was overshadowed by Sims 4 and the fact that I knew the producer videos would be released before I got to publish my article I didn't go quite so overboard on the note taking as I usually do, for which I apologise. What I did takes notes on were the most significant or interesting parts of the game for me, plus a ton of the in-game help pages, so here goes....

Sims Camp

Having spent a few crazy days at Sims Camp at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, I've finally found some time to sit down and start sharing my experiences with the game. I know many of you have been eagerly awaiting information to come out of the event and some attendees have already managed to get some info out via their social networking sites, but in my usual manner, I've opted for a long winded but hopefully informative article.

I have to stress the usual disclaimer, more so than ever. We were seeing and using pre-alpha software, so what we saw is in many ways far from the polished version of the game that will ship next year. Still no suggestions when next year, EA won't be pushed to committing to any quarter or season. Likewise, thinks can change, so I might tell you something here that although correct at the event, may be wrong in the final or later versions. Also, all these images are exclusive to TSR, please don't reuse them, but link people to this article if you want to share them.

EA got the scoop themselves in showing CAS off in the TS4 Live Broadcast from the show floor on Thursday but I'm pretty sure I still have many details here that Jill didn't manage to cover in her report. After speeding through CAS I'll spend more time on Emotional Gameplay which hasn't been covered much yet!

Create A Sim

Jill Johnson is a Producer on TS4 Create-A-Sim. She demoed CAS for us and then we got to play on our own, trying out the tools, stretching our imaginations and grabbing screens and info to share with you all. This build has a very limited set of clothing, hair and other assets. I invited people to post in our forums, any questions they wanted answering and there were lots of concerns about the quality of the hair and it looking like plastic. I grilled Jill best I could on the issue and she explained that hair seen in the early teasers (remember the eyes?) were built with something like Hair version 1.5, today we were using Hair 3.0 and has massive improvements already. Hair isn't finished yet and there is still work to do on layers and textures so as with most stuff, don't write it off just yet, there's still a long way to go before we see a finished game.

The biggest change for CAS is that pretty much all of the sliders have gone and been replaced with direct manipulation. This means that you can use your mouse pointer to simply grab parts of the Sim body and drag them around to make limbs bigger, smaller, wider and narrower. Breasts can move up and down as well as bigger/smaller. Butts can be inflated, shoulders broadened and even feet enlarged. Posture can be changed too, to make Sims slouch forward or walk tall and straight. It's like using modelling clay to build any shape you desire (now I have the smell of 'Play Doh' in my head!). All this allows for an almost infinite body shape. Two sliders that remain are those for Heavy/Fit (represented by an apple and a donut) and Fat/Thin (represented by a couch and a dumbbell).

You can start out by choosing one of a broad range of body shapes and starting faces which you can then fine-tune to your needs if you wish. EA claim to have spent a lot of time creating base faces that represent multiple ethnicities, which can be seen quite clearly in the latest images released. There is also a really smart randomize feature for you to quickly pull together some random Sims. In truth thought, it's not completely random at all! You can choose which features to switch so if you are happy with your Sims face you can lock that in.

Your choices are Body Shape, Body Size, Face, Skin Tone, Hair, Facial Hair, Voice, Clothing or All. The reason I say it's not completely random is that it's smart enough to match certain clothing types and colours. So if it selects a beige leather jacket for a random female Sim the tool might select some beige boots to match. Nothing came out looking like a wardrobe fail in the dark of morning, these Sims looked like the outfits where colour and style matched for them!

Allgamesbeta was the first to find information and images for Sims 4 yesterday and the images and information has spread like a wildfire throughout the community. For those that may have missed it, here is everything we know so far:

The sims 4 Description

The Sims 4 is the highly anticipated life simulation game that lets you play with life like never before. Create and control new Sims with mind, body, and heart. Build their unique worlds. Direct and explore the stories of your Sims and experience delightful and exciting results.

Create and control the most intelligent and relatable Sims ever with new, intuitive design tools. Customize your Sims’ appearances, personalities, aspirations, walk styles, and even their relationship to others.

Select from diverse environments for your Sims to live in and build their home with fun, intuitive design tools that allow you to effortlessly create the homes of your dreams.

Play with life like never before in The Sims 4. The choices you make influence your Sims and everyone and everything around them. These moments create delightful and exciting results throughout gameplay.

How you play The Sims 4 is up to you. Help your Sims start a new career, find love, and start their family. Construct and design the homes of your dreams. Fulfill your Sims’ needs, explore their aspirations, and experience how they respond to life’s moments

The Sims 4 allows you to play with life like never before. The Sims live with rich physical and emotional characteristics and their worlds and stories are influenced by your choices and creativity. Welcome to The Sims 4!

Features

• New Sims – Create and control more intelligent, more relatable, and emotionally rich Sims.

• Intelligence – Your Sims move and act more naturally than ever before, from multitasking to expressing their emotions by the way they walk. Choose the personalities of your Sims, select their aspirations, and explore the depth of their lifelong goals through your Sims’ thoughts, social skills, careers, and memories.

• Emotional Depth – For the first time, Sims feel and express emotions. Your Sims can experience a diverse range and depth of emotional states and are influenced through other Sims, actions, events, memories, or even by the clothing and objects you choose. Emotions offer you more choice by giving you the opportunity to create richer stories with even more possibilities.

• New Creative Tools – Create A Sim and Build are more powerful, intuitive, and fun than ever before. You have the freedom to sculpt Sims with tactile precision. Effortlessly construct the home of your dreams with the all new room-based Build Mode.

• Vibrant Neighborhoods – Chose among brilliant and diverse lots for your Sims to live in. Vivid visuals bring your Sim’s home to life.

We all have favorite characters from movies and television shows, or even from a beloved book. So imagine your favorite character in the Sims world, and then create him or her!

Take a screenshot in one of your Sims games (Sims 2 or Sims 3) that best portrays your favorite character, using clothing, makeup and objects from TSR (or EA). Placing that character into a scene to match would be awesome, but it must be PG-13.

Another EP, another Event... Now that the game is loaded (like the new loading screen?) what can we expect from Island Paradise?

This is the penultimate Expansion Pack for Sims 3 with only 'Into the Future' remaining before we jump into the brave new world of The Sims 4 in the first quarter of next year. So let's 'dive' in, as that's what your Sims will be doing soon!

There were several other fansites at this, and other events held around the world, so information about what this EP contains will be plentiful after today I'm sure. So, as usual, I'll be trying to bring you some different material which includes lots of screen grabs of the new content in game in detail you probably won't see elsewhere (if that's your thing).

The Headliners

Here's the new icon for Island Paradise.

The EP offers some very different gameplay opportunities including the ability to own houseboats which are basically Lots that you can build on in just the same way you can on land, so the sky is the limit (don't try basements, that could end in tears). These can be driven around the game world between the many islands that make up the new world, Isla Paradiso. Sims can suffer seasickness on these and any other boat though, so care may be needed when creating seafaring Sims. Luckily there are 2 new Traits: Loves to Swim, and Sailor.

New activities include driving these boats around the islands, snorkelling and more importantly, diving. When Sims drop below the water surface they start to use the new Scuba Diving skill, looking for shells which are a new collectible item, treasures, fish and other underwater goodies (and baddies). Look out for sharks, as being mauled underwater is a new way to die!

If your Sim really likes the ocean they might want to take up the new Lifeguard Career, spending their days patrolling the beaches and saving lives, though they need to know when they are being duped as if our Lifesaving hero is a hottie, the victims may actually be faking it to get attention!

Mermaids

Mermaids are the newest addition to the collection of abnormalities that EP's tend to thrust on our perfectly formed Sims. These already exist in the waters of Isla Paradiso and befriending one might enable you to invite one into your household. If you aren't that lucky (or sociable) you could spend some Lifetime Reward points on some Mermadic Kelp to send your existing Sim spinning in a wet haze, emerging as a full blown Mermaid/man. I have to admit though, it looks a bit weird when Mermaids exit the water and switch their beautifully flowing tails for some scaly looking colourful legs and feet which I guess is needed if they are to spend time on land, but I was left feeling a bit underwhelmed there. You can drag your Mermaid into CAS and change their scale colours if you want to.

Mermaids are exotic sea creatures who have adapted to life on land. They differ from regular Sims in several important ways.

Mermaids can eat regular food but they prefer things that come from the sea, like fish and kelp. Kelp can be harvested on dive lots or purchased at the grocery store.

Mermaid skin dries out easily and requires constant hydration. Frequent baths, showers and dips in the pool or ocean are a must! If their hydration motive drops too low, Mermaids start to dry up and eventually become dehydrated. If a Mermaid is dehydrated for too long they'll get a visit from the Grim Reaper!

Mermaids' natural habitat is the ocean. They need to swim in deep water regularly or they will develop a salt water deficiency. Mermaids who do not swim in salt water regularly will eventually lose their scales and tails and turn into regular Sims.

Having just taken part in a teleconference with EA I can tell you that The Sims 4 is due to be officially announced later today!

You can expect to see more juicy details spilling out onto gaming websites over the coming days. Rachel Franklin, Executive Producer at the Sims Studio, addressed everyone to announce Sims 4. Over 100 people are already working on the game which is being developed with "fans first".

Here's what EA say about the game: "The Sims 4 celebrates the heart and soul of the Sims themselves, giving players a deeper connection with the most expressive, surprising and charming Sims ever in this single-player offline experience. The Sims 4 encourages players to personalize their world with new and intuitive tools while offering them the ability to effortlessly share their creativity with friends and fans".

The game will be released on PC and Mac in 2014.

We'll keep you posted as we get more info. Be sure to share this news with your Sims fan friends by liking our Facebook post... this needs spreading to the world!

After thousands of participants in our 2013 Member Survey its time to give away some well earned prizes to our members!

Our first 2 winners are: stevihj and Cali95678They will both receive a TSR Coffee Cup, TSR USB Memory Stick AND their choice of any Sims Expansion or Stuff Pack.

Our next 2 winners are: leigh89 and GirlWatcherThey will both receive a TSR Coffee Cup, TSR USB Memory Stick AND a 6 Month Subscription to The Sims Resource.

Our final 2 winners are: Prettypuddy and Hyuuga_InesuThey will both receive a TSR Coffee Cup, TSR USB Memory Stick AND a 2 Month Subscription to The Sims Resource.

Thanks to everyone that took part. We hope you enjoyed your free downloads. The information we gathered has been used to update our Media Kit which is used to sell advertising space on TSR, which is what funds all the great premium creations we are sharing for free in our Today Only section and The Vault.

From today, the popular Today Only feature will be increased from 3 to 10 subscriber downloads. This means that every day you visit TSR as a free member you will have access to 10 different subscriber only downloads. You will see "pre-rolls", or video ads before these downloads to contribute to artist costs and to keep premium creations flowing in to the site.

We are keen to hear your feedback on the use of ads to provide more free premium content as we change the way we share premium downloads, so keep that coming in please. Feel free to use the comments section on this news post.

If you like seeing more and more premium content set to free, please help continue this trend by sharing this news with your fellow Sims players on forums, chats and social networking sites. Why not Like our Facebook Page and Share our news post about it with your friends? We have regular prize giveaways on Facebook for helping us to promote TSR.

If you like what you see then why not become a Subscriber? New and existing subscribers still have unique access to all of the 18,000+ Featured Artist creations using a faster, ad free site, 'quickview' downloads and of course the powerful download basket.

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